


Breaking Silence

by human_dreamer_etcetera



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Episode: s03e01 Ride, Gen, Missing Scene, but the focus is on a friendly face in the midst of grief, vague hints of Morse/Bixby if you care to look, which I guess applies both to Max in this moment and to Bix's role in Morse's post-prison life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/human_dreamer_etcetera/pseuds/human_dreamer_etcetera
Summary: It's still dark when Morse jumps into the lake after Bixby is shot, and full light by the time the police arrive on the scene, during which time Max has already started his work on the body. What happened in that time between, and what did the conversation with Max look like, that Morse is convinced to return to the police by the time Thursday and Jakes interview him?
Relationships: Joss Bixby & Endeavour Morse, Max DeBryn & Endeavour Morse
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Breaking Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AstridContraMundum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/gifts).



> I've been meaning to explore this missing scene for a while now, and finally banged it out all in one sitting (with minimal editing, of course) as something of a writing exercise tonight. Of course I have to gift it to AstridContraMundum, who, aside from encouraging me to write this when I mentioned the idea had been percolating (and, indeed, always cheering on my writing efforts), loves Ride - and Bixby - possibly more than the rest of the fandom combined!

All through the night - from the shot itself, to the slicing chill of the late-season midnight lake, to sprinting back to the house to call in the whole bloody nightmare, to pacing itchily back and forth on the shore, restlessly anticipating the arrival of investigative forces - nothing has quite seemed real. In fact, Morse has felt quite removed from his own body these last few hours, perhaps inhabiting some supernatural plane. But when an ambulance pulls up and out steps Dr DeBryn, the familiar face succeeds where nothing else has in tugging him back to earth.

“Morse,” the doctor greets, understated as always. Morse rather suspects that if DeBryn were the type to wear a hat, he’d tip it; as usual, though, his only accessory of note is a patterned bow tie. 

He doesn’t return the greeting. He’s pretty sure he meant to say something simple in return, even just an acknowledgment in turn - “Doctor” and a nod - yet he doesn’t realize that no sound has left his mouth until the appropriate moment has passed, and so he goes on saying nothing. A heavy stillness has fallen over Lake Silence ever since he shouted, “Bix? Bixby!” and jumped heedlessly into the water. Really, he’s broken it only by recounting a short, brutal summary over the telephone, which hardly seems to count given how far away he was from himself when he said it. There’s some part of him that wants to keep it like that, like he’s holding onto a world with Bixby in it, with Bixby himself as an anchor, as long as he doesn’t speak anything aside from his name into this new world without him. 

Strange, isn’t it, how quickly and fiercely he connected to the man? Rarely has he ever felt so seen. In ways he hasn’t yet had time to fully consider, he and Bix are - were, his traitorous mind reminds - two of a kind.

“You knew the deceased?” DeBryn asks, and Morse, even as buried in grief as he is, appreciates the delicacy with which the pathologist avoids the usual terminology: _the victim_.

“He was… your neighbor?” he clarifies, as Morse simultaneously finishes, “A friend.” The doctor blinks, surprised, and Morse ducks his head, feeling the telltale burn of reddening cheeks. In fairness, it isn’t a term he’s been heard to bandy about often.

The dim, pre-dawn light around them slowly changes from shadowy purple to an eerie blue. In the distance, a bird starts up a lonely song. From his college years, Morse remembers this hour mostly with a prevailing sense of solitariness and defeat, as an event seen only with assignments left unfinished or the early stages of a hangover and earned regrets.

After a while, DeBryn is yet again the one to break the silence between them. “Circumstances aside, I can’t say I’m not glad to see you,” he says. “We’ve all been wondering where you’d got to.”

It’s well-covered, but Morse can tell where the doctor changed from “worried” to “wondering” partway through. Only so much truth such a conversation can bear, he supposes.

“All?” he bites off in reply.

DeBryn pauses in his ministrations over the body to look up at Morse with a frown. “You weren’t forgotten, I assure you,” he says coolly. “Every one of your friends from the force gave testimony on your behalf, myself included.”

Morse hears the accusation, whether intended or not: _You call this man your friend, someone you’ve known for a matter of days, and rely on friends from those years of your life you claim are best forgotten, all while leaving your Cowley compatriots without a word as to where you’ve gone?_

“I had to leave,” he offers weakly, an attempt at a long-deserved explanation. “After everything… who could I trust? And how could I ask any of you to fall on your sword for me, again and again, when it’s so clear the powers that be are set against me?”

DeBryn returns to his work, and Morse looks away, holding back a wicked wave of nausea. “You needn’t always carry the battle on your own, Morse,” he reproves, wearily, albeit with surprising gentleness.

“No,” Morse says, after a moment, rubbing intently at the back of his neck, “no, I don’t suppose. But… it touches everything. The rot gets in and nothing is safe; and I know you all tell me not to let everything be work all the time, but it gets to be there’s nowhere you go without seeing the darkness. So I just needed to…” _I just needed to run_ , he thinks wildly, feeling entirely too much like a schoolboy caught out and helpless. “I needed something new, I suppose. Or old, rather, familiar in one sense but safe from… from all of this.” He gestures vaguely at the lake, then huffs a bitter laugh. “I guess I didn’t go far enough.”

“Oxford to Lake Silence? It’s hardly Ithaca to Ogygia,” DeBryn observes wryly.

Morse worries at his bottom lip, struggling to think of a suitable reply.

“Well. Your gifts are sure to be missed, as they already have been,” DeBryn continues, in absence of a voiced response. Smoothly enough, he pivots. “How did you fall in with this crowd, Morse? Something about an old college friend, Thursday said?”

“Oh, yes. Tony - Anthony Donn, someone I knew when I was up - er, we’ve kept up, vaguely, through the years. I’ve been staying in his family’s dacha by the lake, ever since I got out. And Bruce, Lord Belborough, he’s Tony’s cousin, always made his way back into our circle when we were up, no matter how many times we tried to see him out.” Morse lets out another laugh, a little warmer this time. “Kay, his wife - they married a few years back; I missed that news - must have been around when I got out of Signals - well, she’s got a history of some kind with Bixby.”

“And Bixby was part of this set?”

“Oh, no. Well, sort of. In passing, maybe, or by name, at least. I think Elva - Kay’s friend - must be the one who knows him best of all of them, although I get the sense no one really does. Did. He’s new to the area, new money, and seemingly desperate to show it off. Constantly hosting these parties, real bacchanalian stuff… Elva’d gone to a few this summer, told the rest of us we ought to come and see what it was all about. I guess I didn’t display the expected amount of neighborly curiosity, so Bixby sent me an invite…” 

Morse trails off, lost for a long minute in memories of rainbow lights, crystal everywhere, thumping music under his ribcage, crowds whirling in the sort of inhibitionless glee encouraged by a combination of late hours and questionably procured substances. Underneath it all, a current of longing and stolen glances, and feeling himself caught quite in the middle, pinned by a lasting stare, hearing the echo of proclamations bounced a bit off the mark for their original target…

With a small tug at his earlobe, he brings himself back to the present. “He won’t have done this,” he asserts, drawing on confidence in his conclusions where he lacks in the situation at large. In spite of Kay leaving, choosing Bruce and the practicality of the present over whatever memories she shares with Bixby, that last conversation had felt so full of hope. Of Bix’s hope, anyway. It had been so large and inviting, Morse almost found himself believing in it, that impossible light, too. “On a night like this, a man might believe anything’s possible,” Morse murmurs to himself. He snorts. It’s the stuff of romantic fiction, surely, and yet somehow, Bix embodied that kind of frivolous optimism in a way that made it solid.

How unfair, he thinks, suddenly angry, that he never had the chance to explore what lay beneath the surface. Of the short time he and Bixby had together, most of it was spent dodging around half-truths and swallowed lies. He’ll never know the truth of Joss Bixby, nor - he’s startled to realize he mourns the lost option - share with him the truth of Endeavour Morse.

_“You can’t turn the clock back.”_

_“Of course you can, old man.”_

If only the world worked the way starry-eyed Bixby believed he could command it to, with all his carefully amassed power.

“We’ll find answers,” the doctor assures him, with a kindness that grates against the wretchedness in the pit of Morse’s stomach. “You know we’ll do right by him.” _As we tried to do right by you_ goes unsaid.

“I know,” Morse says. “We will.”

DeBryn, halfway back to the ambulance to pick up an instrument that’s apparently fallen out of his bag, pauses and quirks an eyebrow at Morse. “Second thoughts?” he queries mildly.

“Of a sort,” Morse replies. After all, the whirlwind of these past few days with Bixby isn’t the only time he’s found a space where he is accepted upfront, acknowledged, seen. And for everything he’s been resolutely ignoring these past months, he understands now that he can’t turn away and expect it to disappear.

The lengthening lines of light herald the rising sun. Morse stares off into the distance, remembering. The rumble of a car engine announces the arrival of Thursday and Jakes. 


End file.
